Klaus Jochem

Howto protect against Just-in-time malware

On Sunday morning at the breakfast table I always read the latest issue of invincea’s The Cyber Intelligencer. In this week’s issue Michael Applebaum writes about just-in-time malware that is not recognized by any traditional or next generation endpoint protection tools. I fully agree with Michael, that an attacker has to hijack only one endpoint to compromise an entire company network.

But it’s not necessary to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities or zero days. Just use a built-in weakness of a Windows OS, e.g. UAC not set to “Always notify me” as default, to get privileged access and start exploring the victim’s computer and network.

But the worst is yet to come: If the attacker is not too greedy and impatient, it is very hard to detect his activities because only standard windows means are used.

Prevent, detect and contain are the keys to successful protection against such threats. In report Defensive Best Practices for Destructive Malware the NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate shows the direction. It’s worth to note that most of the technical measures described in this report are just built-in functions of operating systems. No rocket science! But the measures on the people and process level make the difference. For details see e.g. bullet point “Protect and restrict administrative privileges”.